Local Landform Models

Now that I finally got my camera and laptop together in one place and WORKING I can finally post some of what we have worked on in the last week. First and foremost I want to post my newest student blogger, J.Z. She has been my biggest support of the classroom blog and I was excited she decided to write about the Local Landform homework I assigned. Students were to make a 3D model of any landform in Oregon or Washington State (since we live on the border). With the model students needed to write an index card with the name of the landform, where it was located, what type of landform, and two facts about it. When the landforms finally came in I was BLOWN away! It was my proud teacher moment of the year!!! Let's see what J.Z. has to say about the assignment:

We've been learning about forces of nature and our homework was to make a model of a landform. Our teacher had told us the legend of Crater lake and I really enjoyed this study!!! I love doing projects like this. I think it helps me understand more not by being told but actually making me write something to explain what I've learned.

J.Z.'s Crater Lake model

Multnomah Falls in Oregon

Mt. Hood

The Sea Lion Caves in Oregon

Mt. Hood

Columbia River Gorge

The Mima Mounds in Washington

Mt. St. Helens

Crater Lake

The Ape Caves in Washington

I so with I could include every students pictures. They were all so truly amazing and they put so much time and effort in to it! I hope the families had fun doing this activity together and learning about their local landforms!

Topography

You can't do a landform study without examining some topography maps. Most of my kiddos have never seen a topography map before. I broke them into groups and they had to come up with some observations and questions about the topography map of Mt. Shasta. Many students thought that the lines were earthquakes (natural disasters on the mind). After we shared our ideas, I made a foam mountain. Then I traced around each shape one on top of each other. It didn't take long for students to put two-and-two together. Next the students had a hand at making a topography map of Mt. Shasta, standing at 38,000 ft.

Landform Cycle & Chant

As we begin wrapping up the landform unit I finally completed the pictorial diagram. I would only color and label parts of the landform cycle as I taught it. I like how it finally turned out and hopefully it has been a resource for the students.

Other things we have been working on throughout the entire unit is our GLAD big book and the chant/song. My host teacher is a master at writing learning songs to different tunes. When you write and teach a chant you should have the students come up with gestures for key vocabulary words. The songs help students recall information and they are engaging. Here is the song on an anchor chart and my class performing it!

Stream Tables

Student Blogger, H.C., decided to write about what we have been experimenting with in our Landforms unit. Our FOSS kits came late, but they have been so much fun! Her post explains the set-up perfectly. At the end of her post I will go into greater detail of the three different experiments the class did over the last two weeks. Here is H.C.:

What I wanted to talk about is the stream tables we have been doing in class. We have been different types of experiments. One was flooding! What you do is put a big tub on a desk. Then you get a smaller tub and you put it on the ground or a chair. You put amount of sand (and clay) in the big tub. You need a ruler and a cup with a hole in the bottom. You place the ruler side ways so the end of the rulers touch each side of the tub. Then you place the cup on the ruler You will fill the cup with water and wait until it comes through the sand. Before you do this you write a prediction. You are done after a second cup of water. Then you write a conclusion.

Here is a picture demonstrating the set-up H.C. described

H.C. did a great job describing the set up of the stream tables. The first cup is meant to represent standard rain fall. When you fill the cup with water over the earth material (shaped like a plateau) you can witness what would happen to the earth with erosion in thousands of years in only two minutes. Students write and sketch observations of their stream table as two water cups flow over their earth material. I walked around and tried to point out canyons, caves, floodplains, meandering rivers, deltas and more. Our 2nd experiment has a larger hole in the cup that represents a flooding environment. The 3rd experiment is not part of the FOSS kit investigations. My host teacher wondered if we put popsicle sticks (as a way to create a tree type environment) if it would  lessen or slow down erosion. As I walked around I noticed that the "trees" did change the impact of the erosion. The students had a hard time seeing the difference because in both the material did eventually have a landslide (which would happen in reality as well). I  had students create a Venn Diagram to compare the standard rain fall experiment with no trees and the experiment with trees to highlight some of the similarities and differences. This has been a fabulous way for students to witness landforms forming in a very quick and relevant way. I am sorry to see the FOSS kits leave.

Weathering

We have been plugging away with our large landform unit. As we wait for the Foss Kits to show up I have been busy teaching weathering. As we move away from weathering onto erosion I wanted to show what we have done so far. Here is what we have done in science in the past two weeks (not including the GLAD component which I will make a separate post on later):


Weathering Experiment: I took some different rocks from my yard (pebbles and decorative rocks bought at Home Depot) and placed them in a glass baby food jar. Then I had the students fill the jars with water and shake at 15 second intervals. Over time the decorative rock broke away and what looked like sand sediment appeared. We were able to weather our own rocks!

The murky water is actually weathered sediment

A student's experiment write up

Sand Observation: My son has a sand collection from different beaches around the world. We have sand from Japan, Thailand, Honduras, Mexico, Caribbean, and local beaches as well. You would be amazed how all sand looks different! In pairs students got two samples to compare. Then I had students infer why the two samples would look so differently. They had more difficulty with this than I expected. However, after some discussion we realized that different rocks could be one reason for the difference in appearance, and also the how long they had been weathered may also be a factor.

Looking at differences

Sand Samples

Students comparison notes and inferences

Chemical/Physical Weathering Picture Sort: After watching my PowerPoint on the different types of both physical and chemical weathering, that highlight some characteristics to watch for, we inferred from pictures what type of weathering each image was.  For example, honeycomb appearance tells us salt-wedging has occurred. It was fun to guess which type of weathering each image was. To take it a step further, if a student could tell me the EXACT name of weathering that was happening they got a Super Scientist award (more on that in another post).

Landform Dinosaur

Phew, it is two days into my Student Teaching and it has been a whirlwind! Yesterday, Mrs. London was unable to come into school due to an unexpected illness. My first day- I taught ALL day! It was fantastic! I built the suspense of where Mrs. London was (never letting on that I knew she was ill). During Writers' Workshop, students had the choice to write a story of what may have happened to her. One student rewrote the lyrics to "Grandma Got Over By a Reindeer" to fit a possible reason she was gone. Another student consider she was being held hostage! I love to read students' creative stories as they unfold. We are lucky to have Mrs. London back and well.

I get to teach the students one of my favorite science units-LANDFORMS. I love geology. We live in such a wonderful place here in the Pacific Northwest, where we have examples of landforms in all directions. To introduce the concept of landforms I made a cute dinosaur to represent different types. I thought this would benefit our visual learners (like me). For each feature of the dinosaur the students and I predicted what landform it may represent. Look at what we came up with:

We also created a hand gesture to help us remember the definition of landforms. As students say, "Landforms-a natural feature on the Earth's Surface" they roll their hands like hills. As soon as I get my video recorder fixed I will include an example. We use gestures a lot in class. Gestures help kinestic learners, activate both sides of the brain to help facilitate memory, and help language acquistion.

Since now we know what landforms are, we need to know how they are formed. The next couple weeks we will be working on learning about weathering and erosion. Be prepared to see lots of hands-on observations and experiments (the BEST way to learn science in my humble opinion).

Now I am off to dig up dirt and rocks for tomorrows experiments on soil! Here is to hoping I find humus (dead and decomposing organic matter). Yay!